Reeves huffed, shaking his head. “Your secret weapon—not mine, not ours.” Ric sneered, waiting for an explanation. And Reeves was happy to deliver. “You white people, it’s your society, always has been. For someone like me—”
Ric asked, “What are you talking about? You were a corporal in the U.S. Army, an engineer, and you were handpicked for a job you had back in your time. That’s not exactly three-fifths of a person, Reeves.”
“Things hardly changed. Cops shooting us on the street, jobs impossible to get, can’t vote because most of the population were felons. And why were they felons? Drug crimes, drugs you white people created and distributed on our streets, through our own brothers and sisters.”
“I didn’t do any of that!”
Reeves huffed. “Things are worse now! I have been to town, I know what’s going on; not a single black person, hardly anyone else of any color at all. Damn near went snow-blind. And you want us to give our lives for that? You have got to be kidding.”
Ric sighed, pacing around. Reeves and Brooke looked at him impassively, Brooke clinging to her new man’s beefy arm.
“What kind of life is this,” Ric asked, looking around. “Living in the wild, foraging for food?”
“Isn’t that how you were living when we arrived?”
“We had a home, such as it was, a community.”
“And we’ll have those same things,” Reeves said.
Ric looked at Brooke, her eyes big and sad but resolved as she snuggled against Reeves’ strong arm. Reeves was stoic with an unmoving grimace. Ric knew then that he’d be facing the chancellor alone.
“All right then,” Ric said. “I’ve done my best to convince you, but if you’re set on this course, I can’t do anything about it. I wish you luck, I guess. And it’s not that I’m not happy for you both. I mean, love is a rare enough thing under the best circumstances, so… congratulations, right?”
Ric turned to Brooke with a warm smile. “Brooke, I… I know things didn’t work out between us the way you always hoped they would. I never meant to hurt you, I hope you know that. It’s just with Colleen dying and everything, I… I always thought of you as a friend, a sister. I guess I needed that.”
Brooke couldn’t prevent a tear from pushing out of her eye and crawling down her pale cheek. “I understand,” she said.
“And these things,” Ric went on, “they happen for a reason. Now that you and Reeves here have found each other, well, maybe that’s the reason.”
More tears trailed Brooke’s face as she gasped. “You could stay here with us!”
“We’re movin’ on,” Reeves said coldly.
“Okay then,” Brooke said, to Ric as much as to Reeves, “we’ll travel together. There’s safety in numbers, that’s obvious. And Ric, back in the collider, you were our leader!”
“I’m in charge now,” Reeves said, a silent tension lingering in his wake.
Brooke looked nervously from one man to another. “Okay, that doesn’t really matter. We’ll all be working together for our mutual benefit. We’ll need as many able bodies as we can gather if we’re going to survive out in the Rockies.”
“There’ll be others,” Reeves said, “straggling around out there. We’ll consolidate.”
Ric said, “You mean you’ll overwhelm them, take over, take charge like you did here, lay down your own personal marshal law.”
“Drastic times,” Reeves said, fingers craning around the rifle. “Survival of the fittest. You gotta fall into line,” he glanced at Brooke before adding, “for our mutual benefit.”
Brooke said to Reeves, “But… we’re not gonna hurt anyone?”
“Hurt? No.” The silence which followed that statement was deadly.
Ric said to Brooke, “Are you sure you wanna go with him? You can still come with me if you like.”
“No.” Reeves said, “she’s mine now!”
“No,” Ric snapped back, chest thrust forward, “she’s her own person, always has been. We didn’t sacrifice that freedom to the chancellor and we’re not about to sacrifice it to you!”
“It’s okay, Ric,” Brooke said quickly, “I want to stay, I want to be with him.”
The two men stared each other down, teeth gritted, wills pushed to the limit.
Ric said, “All right, Brooke, if that’s what you want.”
Brooke pulled Ric away from Reeves, the two men locked on each other. Brooke knew then that the two men couldn’t cohabitate or work together, and she also knew that where Ric was going, there was no coming back.
Brooke said to Ric, “You go clean up, Ric, change, get ready for your hole to New York. I’m sure that… well, if anybody can do it, you can.”
Ric looked down at Brooke, a little tear creeping down her cheek to know that the old friends were seeing each other for the very last time. Sniffling through her tears, she asked, “Are you sure?”
Ric offered a soft smile and a gentle nod. “Are you?” Brooke glanced at Reeves, then back at Ric and returned his nod with one of her own. Ric said, “Okay then, lemme get cleaned up. You two should probably get going if you’re going to put some distance between you and the chancellor’s goons.”
But Reeves said, “No.”
Ric paused, confused. “I’m sorry?”
“I said no.”
“Right, so, stick around, I don’t give a damn. I got things to do.”
“No,” Reeves said.
“Excuse me?”
Reeves said, “No, you don’t.”
Brooke asked him, “What’s wrong, honey?”
“He’s a security breach. He goes down there, gets caught, he’ll tell them we’re out here and they’ll come after us.”
Brooke shook her head, eyes going wide. “No, he won’t. He was the strongest of all of us, he’d never crack like that!”
“He ran out on his own,” Reeves said. “You call that strength? You call that courage?”
“He had to,” Brooke said. “That woman you brought here is a danger to all of us, to the whole history of humanity!”
After a deadly pause, Reeves pointed the automatic rifle at Ric. “Off point.”
Brooke said, “No, you can’t!”
“He’s as good as dead anyway, storming that tower alone. And he’ll probably get the twins killed, and the rest. It’s for their benefit as much as ours. The man must die.”
Ric looked around, knowing he couldn’t get into the smartphone in his pocket fast enough to hole out of there. Reeves had him dead to rights.
Dead.
Brooke screamed out Ric’s name and threw herself in front of him just before two quick bursts of the machine gun sent a tyrant flycatcher scattering out of the yellow birch branches. Ric was shocked still by the split-second burst of violence, and before he or Reeves realized, Brooke lay dead on the forest floor between them.
They both looked at her in stunned silence, a blood-chilling moment of guilt, horror, and then anger.
Reeves screamed and pulled the trigger on Ric, but the gun clicked dry. The two men faced each other off, teeth gritted, eyes burning. Ric charged and Reeves was ready to receive him. Reeves swung the butt end of the rifle at Ric, hoping to knock him back with a sharp blow to the face.
But Ric ducked it and threw several quick punches into Reeves’ gut. Unfazed, the bigger man raised the rifle and swung that deadly butt down toward the back of Ric’s head. One blow would end it and him.
But Ric was lightning quick and dodged the blow again, trained by a lifetime of survival tactics and self-training. Ric pulled back then threw a sidekick at his adversary, easily blocked by the automatic weapon, empty but still a deadly club.
Reeves had military training on his side, not to mention deadly revenge for the loss of his new love and the guilt he felt for creating that loss with his own hand.
Ric grabbed the rifle again with both hands and leaned back, each man struggling to pull it from the other’s grip.
Ric hissed, “You killed one of my best friends! You see where your leadership takes us?”
“Yeah… to your grave!”
Reeves twisted the rifle and spun around. In an instant, Ric stood with his back to Reeves, still clutching the rifle. Reeves wrenched forward and flipped Ric over his back and to a position in front of him, hopefully on the ground.
But Ric landed on his feet and was quick to retaliate. He head-butted Reeves with a hard crack, the big man wavering. A hard kick to the crotch sent him craning forward with an oof! Ric could finally pull the machine gun out of Reeves’ hands. The image of himself crushing Reeves’ skull with one swift motion filled Ric’s mind, and his arms were ready to respond.
But his instincts thought the better of it, and Ric stepped back to deliver a sound front kick into Reeves’ face. It would put him on the ground, unarmed, without killing him.
Ric stood over him, Reeves on his back on the ground. Ric said, “Stay down, pal.” Reeves grimaced from the forest floor as Ric went on, “Okay, we’ve both lost now, and that was your fault, Reeves, yours! But I’m ready to forgive you. And you’ll do the same, though I’ve done nothing to be forgiven for. Then we get on with the business at hand and get to New York.”
Reeves coughed, straining to breathe. “I’ll kill you the first chance I get.”
“I’ll make you a deal, pal; we get Jeanell out of that tower, you and I will have our day. But until then, we work together.”
“Why should I?”
“There are still the kids to save, and the others. And what reason do you have to stay out here now?” They glanced at Brooke’s dead body, slumped nearby. Reeves’ hardened face went soft, guilt overtaking his anger, then hopelessness, then realization, then resolve.
He looked up at Ric and nodded. Ric extended his hand to help the big man up, and the two of them staggered toward the stream to clean up and get ready. Reeves said, “You got decent moves, boy.”
Ric offered up a chuckled huff. “Don’t call me boy.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jeanell woke to a ringing in her ears. Her head rested on one of the twins’ laps, Honestly, while Truly held Jeanell’s hand to her cheek and stroked it. Her body was slow to move, rubbery, memory of her pain still streaming through her muscles, her bones, her tendons feeling hardened and ready to snap. She tried to move, but could barely lift her head off the boy’s lap.
Ric’s crony Geoffrey, who was once ready to wield the sledgehammer that would have taken Jeanell’s life, sat in a corner of the cold, white room with a few other stragglers. There was nothing in the room at all—no furniture, no fixtures, lights shining down from the ceiling in a glaring, blaring, white hum.
Jeanell looked around, trying to get her bearings, trying to make sense of where she was, who she was, and where she was going.
Then it all came flooding back and tried again to rise, only falling back to the kids’ loving embrace. Geoffrey said, “Don’t bother, there’s nowhere to run. Just lay back and rest, you’ll need your strength.”
“For what?”
Geoffrey shrugged. “Round two.”
Jeanell nearly broke out sobbing to think of another round of that electrical torture; for such a sleek and futuristic world, the device was especially antiquated and cruel. And she didn’t think she would survive another round of it.
Geoffrey asked Jeanell, “What did they ask you? What did they want to know?”
Jeanell winced to peer through the haze of her fried memory. “Who I was, how we got here, if I’d help them do it again.”
Geoffrey asked, “And?”
“And nothing,” Jeanell said. “Of course, I’m not going to do that. If those maniacs learn the secret of time travel, Ric’s right; it’ll be the end of everything, for all time!”
Geoffrey nodded and leaned back. “Ric was right about a lot of things.”
“Like when he ordered you to bash my brains in?”
“That was the right call at the time, yes. I’m sorry about it, I know he was too. And really, you’re alive now—”
“No thanks to you!”
“I did what I was told to do.”
“Oh, you were just following orders. Is that right? I can’t believe you’re in here with us and not out there with them!”
“I spent my life fighting them,” Geoffrey said.
“You were hiding underground like rats.”
“We were enduring, surviving, waiting for our chance.”
“And I’m it, Geoffrey, I was your chance! Look around, because that isn’t any choice at all!”
Geoffrey said, “Then why not make the most of it?”
Jeanell thought about it, but it was too cryptic, too vague. “Speak your mind,” Jeanell said, flat and cool.
Geoffrey was already on his feet, making his way toward Jeanell on her back on the cell floor. He knelt and, in a very low whisper, said, “Pretend to help them, but sabotage the effort. Turn it against them. Sacrifice yourself if you have to.”
It was a chilling notion, but one which Jeanell was hard pressed to discount. Her life was over anyway, hers and the others’ too. It was really a question of when and not if. She said, “Maybe you’re right. Ric’s not coming to rescue me, or any of us. And he was our only hope.”
“Don’t you know by now? The chancellor has outlawed hope.”
Jeanell considered it, mind already racing through the possibilities. She answered back in a whisper, knowing the room was certainly bugged. “But… how? I’m not even sure how it happened the first time, exactly.”
Geoffrey said, “You’ll just have to wing it.”
She knew he was right, but she wasn’t convinced that she could pull it off, or that it would work as a suicide blow against the chancellor’s regime. She reasoned, “They’ll suspect me; I’ve already lied to them too many times.”
Geoffrey shrugged. “Not if they torture you again; anybody would acquiesce.”
“Again? Oh no, I just don’t think I’ll survive that.”
“Sure, you will,” he said. “They’re not trying to kill you, they’re trying to keep you alive. At least for a bit longer. Of course, another round of torture and you don’t crack, they’ll probably just write you off as incorruptible and put a bullet in your head.”
This was the outcome Jeanell dreaded more and more, even as it became more and more inevitable. One way or the other, Jeanell knew, I’m never getting out of this alive. I may as well take as many of these bastards with me as I can.
The door opened and an armed guard stepped into the room, with Brad behind him. “Hey kids,” he said with a terribly cheerful smile, “How’re we all doin’?”
Jeanell sneered at her former boss. “We? We’re waiting to die, Brad… but you? You’re going to hell. That’s how we’re all doing.”
Brad chuckled. “You never were this… this brash, Jeanell, this strong. I have to say, I like it, I really do. To be honest, I kind of went for the shy blond lab researcher approach too, that was… that was hot, gotta say, like a sexy librarian or something. But this, it’s like you’re a whole new person.”
Jeanell didn’t need to say anything; saying nothing at all proved him correct, more than he could have realized.
“Anyway,” Brad smiled, “I’ve got good news. You, Jeanell Glenn, have an appointment to see Chancellor Kana. Seems the vice chancellor has been, um, singing your praises.”
Jeanell reflected on her chat with Geoffrey, of the possibilities of overplaying her hand. So she repeated contemptuously, “Why would I want to meet your chancellor? He’s a tyrant and a pig and so are you.”
“We all assumed you’d be… hesitant, or is it reticent?”
“You hesitate to act,” Jeanell said coldly, “you’re reticent to speak.”
“Right, that’s right; I’m always getting those two mixed up. Well, you were the brains behind the operation, weren’t you? No wonder the chancellor expects a meeting.”<
br />
Jeanell sneered. “When?”
“Now, of course.”
Hairs on the backs of Jeanell’s arms stood on end. “Right now?”
Brad looked around the dank, empty room. “You got something better to do?”
Jeanell knew what Brad meant. This wasn’t an invitation, she was being summoned and she had to appear. Without knowing what she was going to say or do, Jeanell pushed herself to her feet, still rubbery and wobbly as the twins and Geoffrey helped her. Brad grabbed her arm lightly, allowing it to seem as if he was stabilizing her, helping her. But really he was holding her, and she wasn’t about to escape. He smiled and said, “After you,” before escorting her out of the cell. Jeanell took a last look back at the twins, Honesty and Truly, and Geoffrey and the others. She offered them a wry little smile, but there was no mirth in, only bittersweet and tragic finality.
Brad walked her, armed guard behind them, down another long, golden hall toward a private service elevator. They paused in front of the door, another armed guard stepping aside to let them enter. “Private elevator to the chancellor’s office,” Brad said to Jeanell. “He came all the way into town to meet you.”
They stepped in and the doors slid shut. “I thought he lived here.”
But Brad just smiled, and the gesture made Jeanell’s skin crawl. He finally said, “Black holed it from the Kremlin.”
“Oh, right,” Jeanell said. “Of course.”
The elevator doors slid open and Brad led Jeanell down another hall to another pair of double doors behind another pair of armed guards. Brad nodded at them and they parted. He knocked on the door, waited for a muffled, muttered welcome, and opened the door.
Jeanell stepped in, finally allowed to pull her arm free, their armed guard standing behind them.
The familiar Vice Chancellor Haines stood near the desk, and behind it sat a figure unknown to Jeanell, rigid, blond hair pulled back in a tight bun.
Jeanell stood there, stunned to see a woman sitting behind the desk, in the very seat of power. Jeanell said, “Miss Chancellor Kana? Missus?”
Maruvian Bride (Alien SciFi Romance) (Celestial Mates Book 5) Page 36